How to WIN at CLEARING for pupils and parents
Nervous students today find out their grades, but it can also be a testing time for parents. Luke Mintz has expert advice to offer them
The day has arrived. For months, you’ve nagged them to revise, traipsed with them around university open days, and endured endless, nail-biting discussions of: “But, Mum, what if I did get a D in Chemistry?” Now it’s all over, and in just a few hours your son or daughter will head to school and, along with more than 200,000 other teenagers across the country, pick up their long-anticipated A-level results.
Results day is not, of course, all about the children. Tomorrow’s newspapers may be packed with shots of joyous teenagers waving their clean sweep of A*s in the air, but don’t be fooled: results day can feel just as momentous for you, the parent, as for your child.
So, how do you get through the most stressful day of the school calendar with your parental sanity intact?
What should you do if your child doesn’t get the grades they needed? And how do you keep your spirits up on such a highly strung day? We asked the experts.
To go or not to go?
Should you take your child to school and stand by their side as they open their results envelope? Or should this particular rite of passage be one that your teenager takes alone?
Bernadette
John, director of The Good Schools Guide,
thinks parents should insist on going – even if your offspring object.
This year, she said, A-levels have seen the biggest shake-up in decades, with coursework and modules abandoned in many subjects in place of toughened-up exams. Change means unpredictability, and John says you should be on-hand in case the worst should happen and – gulp – your child misses out on their university place. She advised parents to take their child to school and then “skulk around the corner” while they pick up their results.
“I drove my son there and sat in the school car park, which was packed with mums,” she admits.
Sir Anthony Seldon, vice-chancellor of Buckingham University, however, is not so sure. “What’s important is that it’s right for the student,” he says. So, go along if your child wants you there, but “it’s not good if a parent imposes themselves, that’s just embarrassing”. He ensured that his own children opened their results by themselves, he adds, in spite of being their headmaster at Berkshire’s £12,000-a-year Wellington College at the time.
Clearing: the dos and don’ts
Disaster strikes. Your child has missed a crucial grade and their dream university place seems to be slipping away. They must now join some 12,000 other students across the country in the race for university places known as “clearing”.
The good news is that this year is a buyer’s market. With elite universities desperate to fill 5,000 courses, 2018 has been dubbed the best year for students in decades.
The bad news is that no amount of sharp-elbowed, middle-class grit will work. However desperate you may be, university admissions officers are unanimous in warning that parents must not ring around for places on their child’s behalf.
Helen Basterra, head of admissions
at the University of Brighton, says she needs to see if a student is independent-minded before they can offer them a place, and that’s not going to happen if they let Mummy or Daddy fight their corner.
“We have to hear directly from them about what they want to do,” she says. “We never want to feel like they’re being forced into something by their parents.”
Mark Blakemore, who manages clearing at St George’s University in west London, says that some parents who phone up themselves seem to believe the “sheer force of their personalities will get their son or daughter a place”.
He remembers one in particular last year who, after being rejected, called again and again, hoping to speak to a different clearing officer. Another stressed parent handed the phone to their child, who was so flustered they immediately hung up. Stay calm, he advises, and most importantly, don’t try any dirty tricks. Another clearing volunteer at St George’s says she was “fairly sure” last year that a mother called up pretending to be her own son.
At Loughborough University, one parent is said to have offered a “donation” in their plea for a place, prompting a stern warning that bribery would not work. The key to clearing, the experts agree, is to be prepared. Look into which universities have spare places, and bring the relevant phone numbers along to school with you. Talk to your child beforehand about their backup and don’t pressure them into taking a path they might later regret. See today’s pullout How to win
at clearing supplement for step-bystep guidance.
Keep off social media
In his 20 years as headmaster of Wellington, Sir Anthony remembers floods of students coming to his study in tears on what always proved to be an emotionally fraught day. But, he says, the anguish has been amplified by the impact of social media.
Teenagers who are disappointed with their results will now log on to their Facebook, Snapchat or Instagram accounts to see their friends posting in jubilation about their string of A*s. Encourage your child to log off social media altogether on results day, he advises.
“A lot of people post selfies of them screaming their heads off because they’ve got three As,” he says.
“That can be deeply wounding. I always think that modesty is a good thing, rather than screaming your head off about how marvellous you are.”
But poor social media etiquette is not limited to teenagers, he adds. Some parents have developed a deeply unedifying habit in recent years of bragging about their child’s success on Facebook. “There is nothing less attractive than a parent who boasts about their child. I say that as a former head teacher, as a parent, as a child, as a vice-chancellor.
“They just need to be a bit more circumspect, and a bit more sensitive to the feelings of others. Most people really don’t want to hear about how marvellous your children are.”
Stay calm – and keep it all in perspective
Perhaps the most important advice is the simplest of all: stay calm, and remember that a disappointing set of A-level results will not seal your child’s future. As they love to remind us each year, there’s a long list of successful figures who skipped university entirely, from Richard Branson to Lord Sugar. Add to that list a new generation of “tech native” Youtubers and vloggers who jumped straight from school to create their own hugely successful empires. Youtuber Zoe Sugg, known by her online name Zoella, left school in 2008 and started a fashion blog. She now has 12 million online subscribers and is worth an estimated £2.5 million.
But if your child is still intent on university, don’t be afraid of a gap year.
Mary Curnock Cook, the former head of UCAS, advised last year that taking time out from education could do them wonders, providing space to form the crucial skills they will need to “function in corporate and working life”.
Most importantly, if they do well, enjoy it. After all, whatever you allow your son or daughter to believe, this is your day, really.
‘There’s nothing worse than a parent boasting’